I Became the Leader of a Villain Organization

Chapter 64: Despair

Order 66.

The plan, being formulated in the utmost secrecy by the Führer and the military brass within the Duchy of Germania, was so simple that it could hardly be called a plan at all.

Quickly overrun the weakened Holy Kingdom, force its surrender, and hold it before the Breton Empire could take any preemptive action.

Three of the continent’s great powers.

If you can capture one of them, the Holy Kingdom, in the shortest amount of time, you’ll have time to plan your next move against the Empire of Breton, which will be slow to act.

With the kingdom’s attention focused on the border clash, a blitzkrieg could theoretically be launched in less than six weeks to break through the capital….

That day, after losing a key power at the hands of the Black Snake at the World Military Exposition, the Duchy could easily take over the Holy Kingdom, which had barely survived a revolution and was in the throes of a purge.

It was a plan full of dreamy ideals.

Common sense dictated that only a madman could carry out such a plan, and fortunately, the man named Gustav Wheatley was mad enough to push through such an insane plan.

So when his leather-clad Ergo issued Order 66 in the ‘name of the Führer’, no one in the Duchy dared to question it.

No one, not even the Duchy commanders in charge of the Heersgruppe, the large group of troops that were to be used in the immediate invasion.

It would be many times better to walk into battle on one’s own feet than to die in protest before the Führer’s eyes.

And in those circumstances, when no commander would suspect military suicide-

There was a man who had been specially appointed by the Führer, and given arbitrary operational command and discretion beyond that of a formal commander.

A strange young man, whom none of the long-serving officers recognized, whom they had never heard of.

“Well, that’s the military for you.”

The man scratched at his red hair in a cheerful voice.

“I don’t like it, but what can I say?”

The man’s eyes were reptilian, grotesquely slit like snakes.

“You see,” he said, “I was ordered by my superiors to-.”

At the snake-eyed man’s side was a burly, muscular man in an immaculate suit.

“Chet, it’s not in your nature to lead anyone.”

The man with the head of a wolf.

*

“Give the country to the Duchy, what the hell does that even mean!”

Charlotte, the queen who defended her country from a traitor who claimed to be a revolutionary, shouted.

“I didn’t say anything about handing it over.”

“Then what the hell is this?!”

“In the face of the Duchy’s army, which is about to be set in motion, you can expect no mercy from me.”

In the face of irresistible evil, in the face of an enemy that cannot be defeated, I believed there was only one course of action.

To fall to one’s knees and beg for mercy.

“The promise is different!”

And so, in the face of evil, on his knees, begging for mercy, his mercy was as sweet as a heavenly song.

“What’s different?”

Until she realized there was an end to his playing.

“─I kept my promise to protect the kingdom from revolution.”

The man said. And true to his word, the kingdom was protected.

But not in the face of the invasion of the Duchy of Germania, which has since become a force to be reckoned with.

“Beyond that, am I obligated to serve this country?”

“……!”

“As I said, it is your freedom to defend this country from them. As the lord of the realm, it is your heart to resist the invasion.”

The royal castle of Lutecia, capital of the Holy Kingdom.

Once burned to the ground and nearly reduced to ashes at the hands of the Revolutionary Army, it was defended by a man. There was no denying that fact.

“Holy Maiden……!”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Charlotte.”

With the feeling of grasping at the last rotten piece of copper, Charlotte turned to face the Holy Maiden, not expecting anything, of course. Just as a person grasping at straws doesn’t expect to hold on to them.

She simply stretched her arms out in front of her.

“I am only a sword to fulfill my master’s command.”

But there was no such thing as a holy maiden to begin with.

“And this is master’s new order.”

“…….”

There was only the “Black Saint”, with Death Sword guarding her side.

The eyes of the two females there were stained with blind loyalty to the Black Snake from the start.

“……!”

This was the reality of the once great country, one of the three powers ruling the continent.

The end of powerlessness, where the entire fate of a nation is determined by the whim of a single person, and where there is nothing to do but beg and plead to change that person’s mind.

“Please, Lord Rain-!”

And so Charlotte fell to her knees once more.

“Whatever you ask, I can do anything for you, I promise……!”

Hanging naked and clinging to all the pride she could have as a queen-nay, as a single woman.

─Even the duchy’s army, which had begun to move like an unstoppable force, never realizing that it was the man’s will.

“Is my body not enough? Is everything in this country not enough?! I can give you everything, I’ll give you everything, I’ll swear to serve you with my whole life, so please, please……!”

One more time, please have mercy.

Charlotte begged, swallowing shame and humiliation worse than death, and so did her knights as they watched.

The sight of the lord he was supposed to serve fawning and coquettishly like a roadside prostitute, and finally begging while holding onto his trouser legs was so humiliating that it would have been better for him to die.

Sir Bridamante, at the queen’s side, bit his lip. Hard enough to tear and bleed. But it was all she could do.

Most helpless of all was her own weakness, helpless to do anything while her queen suffered the humiliation of becoming a roadside whore.

Would she rather-

“Please, Sir Rain.”

It is better to fall to the same depths than to turn a blind eye to your lord’s humiliation.

Sir Bridamante fell to his knees as well. Not caring that the man was the enemy who had killed the country’s proudest knight.

Like Queen Charlotte before her, he was the enemy who had killed her first love, her favorite.

“Please, for the sake of this country, have mercy…….”

To them, death was a trivial matter, and so they endured shame and humiliation worse than death, only to whimper and whimper and whimper with all they had at the end.

At the same time, it was the privilege of the weak, whether male or female, who gave up resistance in the face of an unbeatable enemy and submitted to reality.

It was also the end of the wisdom that chose wise submission over the folly of standing up for justice and righteousness in the face of evil.

*

“Hoo-hoo, Rain, your decision is truly creepy.”

Freya, a member of the snake group with the name of Illusion, giggled and whispered.

After hearing the full story of what had transpired in the royal court of the Holy Kingdom, she blushed in ecstasy and consoled herself desperately.

“Alas, this is the man to whom I gave my all as a woman and swore eternal loyalty…….”

“……”

In front of her, the female swordswoman with the tinnitus of “Death Sword” fell silent.

She felt nauseous.

At the same time, she realized that all of the feelings she was experiencing now, all of the forms of “life” that the dead were not allowed to have, were miracles that came from the fingertips of that repulsive woman.

What she realized after becoming a member of the Black Snake is that they are all insane.

A group tainted by absolute fanaticism for a man named Rain Gray and his undeniable power over all evil in the world.

They weren’t just a criminal organization.

They were a cult.

A group of fanatical, blinded sociopaths in the presence of a man named Rain Gray.

“……What was the right decision?”

Alina the Swordswoman, a former member of the righteous group known as the Knights Order, asked.

“What do you mean, the right decision?”

Freya asks, shaking her head.

“The master……told me it was foolishness.”

Alina replies, her voice calm.

“In front of us, who reject the mercy he offers and fight back to the end, or in front of those other than us who choose to stand up and pursue justice to the end.”

And yet he was the one who had given her back the life she had given up.

“But instead of choosing such folly, I chose ‘wisdom,’ in the words of Queen Charlotte-.”

Wisdom and foolishness. Either way, the ending is certain.

“And what choice do we, in the presence of the man named Rain Gray, have to make?”

Alina asked, even though she knew the question might be a bit rude for a member of the Serpents.

But she was prepared for it.

In front of the woman who gave her life, she could lose it all with a word that insulted her idol.

But it didn’t happen.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Instead, she heard a laugh, a laugh so distinctive that it could not be easily imitated by anyone but her.

But the aristocratic laughter was short-lived, and before long, Freya was laughing so hard she couldn’t contain herself.

The most primitive and vulgar form of laughter, with no dignity or grace.

“……what’s so funny?”

Alina asked.

“Because it’s such a ‘stupid’ question.”

Freya laughed at the question, the tone of her voice not her usual one filled with bravado and formality.

“What was the right thing to do? There’s only one thing, and that’s the first thing.”

“……What’s that?”

“There was no right answer or hope from the beginning.”

Freya giggled.

“From the beginning, when I met him, when I met Rain, when I met our leader-.”

It was a smile that was so natural and familiar, and with it an eerie cynicism that twisted the corners of his mouth in a grotesque way.

“That’s the reason for all the bad luck, the moment when all fate was sealed.”

And then she understood that her big, verbose statement could be summed up in a two-letter word.

Once she understood, Alina burst out laughing.

Everything she had been struggling with was stupid. She laughed at the stupidity of all the times she had asked herself, a thousand times a day, endlessly, “What was the right choice” the day her beloved childhood friends and colleagues died.

It was a laugh filled with despair.